(Mt. Tamalpais)


The fundamental things are uncertain--
Tornadoes and hurricanes tear up the news,
and imagination pops off roofs and lifts cars.

The pines in the distance have been overcome
by evening and so, they’re open-minded.
Could be ocean sponges, clouds, or fires.

She wore a fine layer of glitter on her eyelids.
After kissing the lipstick from her lips,
I kissed that away too. She shivered.

But it doesn’t stop there.
It gathers topsoil and throws it high.
It wrestles up the mantle and the crust

and exposes the liquid earth.
Then it peels apart the molecular bonds of magma
and inside--stars. A new big bang.

It took only the barest brush to her eyelash.
Solitary atmosphere enclosed us both;
She gasped as she held her eyes snug.

And what if it’s a wind
that hectors the planets about their orbits
trailing tendrils of cosmic dust,

the galaxy like a hurricane?
In the eye, a black hole
converges on the celestial coast.


I wonder what she saw--a darkness,
glitter on it, pressed by my tongue--
shining dizzy in cold space.

Back to the pines: Imagination can take them,
no longer even green, anywhere it wants to go,
but I am fearfully tempted

to know the difference:
Fitful, dreaming Mt. Tamalpais,
native woman cursed to sleep,

if there’s anything more careful than her sleep,
it’s this moment,
when something’s at risk, and knowing what

threatens to twist her mountain blanket,
fuss, and plow the buildings up....
But even when her trembles shake reason,

stretch earth, and loosen imagination
until she can’t summon legend from fiction,
woman from mountain, or awake from dream,

they leave addled clarity. Sometime soon,
we will postpone our bed
for a torrent of hesitations.

And then some fearful part of me
is sure to want a distinction, cutting
mystery off into its deadly answers.

If I feel alone in this world, it is my fault.
I could believe a greater magic waits
just across this valley.

Like a universe that had gathered cloudy nebulae
and myriad suns, belonging to the awkward darkness,
her eyes close, glittering anyway.

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